Height Discrimination Is Stupid

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People can't help their height.

It's seen as a go to insult. Esp for men.

It's seen as meaning things in terms of character and intelligence and whether you respect someone or not.

I see it as the last bastion of physiognomy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiogno ... hysiognomy

A person is their brain not their height.

Unless you're hiring an athlete then by all means select based on muscle type and height. But choosing someone to respect? It's stupid.

It's not even like a facial feature. Many facial features can be changed massively in plastic surgery or even with makeup. Height is equally racialised (Asians tend to be smaller) and the 'best' a plastic surgery regarding height can do is give the person a couple of inches.

Women can change it with high heels but that hurts and is really obvious. Men have even greater stigma (and lost dating prospects) for being short and can get around it by shoe inserts but again, only adds a couple of inches.

Showing romantic preference (or lack thereof) for people of certain height ranges may not be so much an act of discrimination as it is an act of interest.

I am six feet tall (when I can stand straight these days), and women who are much shorter or much taller than I are just not interesting to me.  It's as if some hidden switch simply fails to connect whenever I encounter those people -- there is no emotional reaction at all.

That is not to say that other attributes may close that hidden switch -- shape, proportion, personality, attitude, intelligence, education, talent, et cetera -- it is to say that women at or close to my own height are the ones I have been most attracted to.

My wife, for example, is about 8 inches shorter than I, and while her overall appearance first caught my attention, it was her personality that inspired me to propose.

Yes but we allow a lot more in romance than in socialising in general.

That's because we care if people are sexually attractive. Not everyone does, but enough people that it becomes a 'thing'.

However, discriminating against height in the workplace*. Or even in friendships, that's stupid.

* for most jobs. I still think there should be a height restriction in things like being a firefighter since it's a physically demanding job

Treating people a certain way due to heights is ok when it's aesthetic judgement or physical strength judgement. But not when it's about intelligence or personality. You can't tell those latter things based on how tall someone is, or most other aspects (any other non-chosen aspects) of their physical appearance.

For me, friendship is based on attitude more than anything else, while attraction seems to involve a lot of other factors, as well.

I completely agree, but is that kind of mistreatment actually common? The only cases I've heard of anyone saying that their intelligence or personality would've been questioned because of their height or the lack of it have been ones who have that thing that leaves them really short, the thing that's in genes... or was it an illness? Could it be that, at least in come cases, people have so bad issues with their own height that they blame negative treatment on it even though the actual reason is something, anything, else?

Happens all the time to me.

I used to think 'give it ten years' etc.

No. I'm 32. And still being treated like I'm 12. By absolute strangers.

It's cos I'm 4"11.

Why is height discrimination even a thing?? i have tall and short friends. It's not their height that counts, it's their personalities.

Huh... but if they really think that you're 12, then it's not really height discrimination, is it? It's not discrimination to not to be able to tell someone's age properly. If they still act the same way after you've proven your age then that's different, of course.

When I tell people my age they continue to patronise me.

People on here call me pretentious for mentioning my degrees but the assumption is that if you're short (and autistic) you're an idiot. A reminder of stuff like 'I went to uni nine years ago' is less clumsy than a mentioning of age.

If there's a more pop culture way to do that, I'll do it.

But honestly most of my friends I know through courses and art and stuff like that so we're all a bit 'pretentious'.

The fact is this kind of stuff affects hiring. People like taller leaders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_di ... rimination
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10 ... 0212437211

If we worry about s**t like 'body positivity' for something changeable like weight, we should worry about it with height too.

People will have preference with regards to all sorts of human attributes.
For example, some people like shorter woman, some people like tall woman.
This is a preference. One of many that most people will hold.

Discrimination is something different.
For example. If i were to hate all tall woman because they are tall and decided to mistreat and abuse all woman who are tall because of this simple attribute.

Then that would be prejudice, an irrational disliking for a person with a particular trait or attribute.

I personally like woman who are shorter than me, and ideally on the slim, athletic or even skinny weight category.
That is my preference, however, it isn't necessarily a clause breaker for me, and i most certainly will not intentionally mistreat any one based on their height, weight or looks.

All such attributes are given by God, and are for the most part not chosen by the individual by choice.
If I had a problem with how someone looks in terms of physical appearance, then my problem is not with
the individual but with God. A fight that i can not win on any grounds.

If I was to choose a candidate cos they were tall, that would be discrimination against short people.

At times there are reasons for it.

Like if you're hiring a firefighter.

Or a jockey the other way round.

For mentally, not physically, taxing jobs, there's no reason for it.

Have reasons to hire people that actually make sense for the actual job not just 'oh I like tall people' or 'I like slim people' or 'I think it'd be nice to have a woman about the place' etc.

Maybe it's cos all my training is in academic type work (librarian) and all my family have worked in non-physical jobs too (teachers, engineer, professors) but to me work: brain. Judge based on the brain.

And don't go on about 'oh he feels s**t about being small he must have a chip on his soulder', 'Napoleon complex' type crap.

Even in platonic friendships, it's shallow to for eg not have friends who are short or fat or tall or thin by choice. Aspies are some of the rare people who can live in a city and not have a choice about stuff like this. Cos of lack of friends in general. But my friendship circle looks like all sorts of different appearances like fat people, thin people, short people, tall people, different ethnicities although mostly my own, different genders although mostly guys. Who cares? 1 they're nice people and 2 they share hobbies with me.

In dating is different cos you want to kiss them (if you're too Christian for anything else) etc. I want to kiss a hot but nice woman not an ugly but nice woman.

A person's height doesn't matter to me. It's their personality that counts.

There's like maybe 10 women in your state who are "much taller" than 6 foot

Weight and age discrimination are more of a thing than height in women.

For men height discrimination is a thing though...taller women never date a shorter man as Fnord alluded to earlier.

It can lead to people thinking someone is a child or otherwise unworthy of respect.

I honestly don't care about the dating side of it. But it affects stuff like careers.

Trans men are men.

Did you pick up my advice to be more assertive? I dated a girl who was 4foot11 who was a medical student and she was very confident and outgoing, people also thought she looked younger than her age (she was 25 but looked around 16) but she wasn't ruffled (alas I was not good enough for her ).